LONG SEES DAWN OF COLLEGE SUPER-CONFERENCES

Think this recent round of conference realignment in college football has been crazy?

You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.

At least that’s the opinion of San Diego State football coach Rocky Long.

“I think there’s a lot of things still to be determined. I don’t think the shifting conferences is over yet,” Long said Thursday at his weekly news conference. “I think it’s just beginning. I think there’s going to be some huge shifts over the next four or five years, and I think there’s going to end up being four to five super-conferences that will play a tournament that will determine who the national champion is.”

In that respect, regardless of the changes that have wracked the Big East over the last two years, Long sees the Aztecs’ 2013 move to their new league as a good thing.

“I think there’s going to be a merger of several conferences into those super-conferences, and I think you have to be in one of the traditional conferences to have a chance to be included in one of these super-conferences,” Long said. “And the Big East is a traditional conference.”

Just without some of its traditional powers.

After losing West Virginia to the Big 12, and Pitt and Syracuse to the ACC, the Big East lost Rutgers last week and Louisville this week to the forces of conference realignment.

It replaced those two teams with the addition of Tulane and East Carolina, which will join the league from Conference USA in 2014. As a result, the new Big East will feature at least six C-USA refugees in the years to come.

But Long downplayed any notion that the new league will simply be a reconstituted version of C-USA.

“I don’t compare it to Conference USA at all,” Long said. “I believe it’s going to be a truly national conference. We’ll have six to eight teams on the west of the Mississippi River, and six to eight teams on the east of the Mississippi River. I think it’s going to be the ultimate national conference.”

Quarterback Adam Dingwell can think of at least one reason why it’d be fun to play in the Big East — the native Texan would relish the idea of playing games in his home state, against fellow Big East-West members Houston and SMU.

“That’ll be exciting. My parents will get to go to that,” Dingwell said. “We’re excited to go to the Big East and play some new teams. It should be fun for us.”

Scrimmage for youngsters

The Aztecs are back in spring practice mode from now until the Dec. 20 Poinsettia Bowl.

For the first time all season, the scout team players got to scrimmage on Wednesday. The results were ... interesting.

“I liked the enthusiasm and effort yesterday. Did I like what I saw from the younger guys? No,” Long said. “It looked like they’ve been scout team players all year long.”

Still, that’s to be expected.

“That’s what’s so important about being in a bowl game for the development of the program,” Long said, adding that the scout teamers will scrimmage at least four more times over the next few weeks.

“The way they’ll play the fourth or fifth time we scrimmage will be dramatically different than yesterday,” Long said.

Schedule changes

The Aztecs added an away game against New Mexico State to their 2013 nonconference slate Thursday, and will play the Aggies in Las Cruces, N.M. on Sept. 13. That game replaces a road contest against San Jose State, will has been moved back to 2016.

The game against NMSU is half of a newly added home-and-home series, and the Aggies will repay the visit by coming to Qualcomm Stadium in 2016.

The Aztecs also added a home-and-home series with Cal that begins in Berkeley in 2015 (Sept. 12). The two teams will play again at Qualcomm Stadium in 2016 (Sept. 10).

The Aztecs also extended their series with San Jose State, and will play the Spartans in three consecutive seasons, beginning in 2014. With next year’s game being moved back to 2016, SDSU and SJSU will play in San Diego in 2014 (Sept. 13) and in San Jose in 2015 (Sept. 26) and 2016 (Sept. 17).